About “H·A·M”

Released on January 11, 2011, this was the first single from Kanye West and Jay-Z’s collaborative album, Watch The Throne. The song finds the two stars spitting highly braggadocio lyrics about their conquests and wealth. It peaked at #23 on the Billboard Hot 100 and is certified Gold by the RIAA.

Famed fashion designer Riccardo Tisci designed the single’s artwork, and would also go on to design the entire WTT album package and single covers.

Jay had been reluctant to release H•A•M as a single, and in retrospect he has said the first song released from WTT should have been a three-minute song built on Kanye and him simply trading verses, no hook. During a WTT listening session, Jay revealed that initially he and Kanye were looking to make a grandiose project with elaborate songs – with H•A•M being a prime example of the epic sound they were first pursuing. The WTT we hear today is greatly scaled back from their original direction, which was even more dramatic and calculated. But, upon reflection Jay and ‘Ye felt that creating in that manner would take away from its enjoyment, so they chose to pare it down sonically.

Jay explained this decision during the listening session, saying of ‘H•A•M’:

It’s just so big and so much, you don’t want that shit screaming in your house. If we don’t make records that we like and represent the culture, we would be over."

And further, in an interview with Miami radio station 99 Jamz on the day of the album’s release, where H•A•M was left off WTT’s main track-listing but included as a bonus track on the Deluxe Edition:

I just wanted people to really enjoy and experience the album for the first time together. The way we wanted it to be heard … ‘H•A•M’ is super intense, you don’t want to hear that every day. It’s difficult to hear that. Inside a whole body work, it’s different. Like when we perform ‘H•A•M’ live it’s a whole different experience, it reacts like it was this massive hit record. Because that’s the setting or it. The setting for it is a concert, not inside your home. We just wanted people to hear the album how we intended it."

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